Caterwauling

Short but sweet. Fewer questions but longer answers. And in case ya’ll didn’t notice, I like to ramble!

1. Comparing your life as it currently is to the way it was a year or two or five ago, are you more content? If so, why? If not, why?

My life has changed a lot, but not at all, in some respects. I’m still a workaholic who can’t prioritize a personal relationship to save my life. Maybe I just haven’t met the right person. I don’t think any of the past ones were, so I’m not looking back or anything. But yeah, there’s that definite void of a true tag-team partner in this crazy odyssey. I’ve just wised up and gotten past the “bad boys” and am now looking for better-quality people.

It’s strange insofar as the person I am. I feel like I’ve become more comfortable with who I am, but I’ve learned to hide her more efficiently. I think, to some degree, I’ve always worn my heart on my proverbial little sleeve, but I think that shirt went through the dry cleaner’s one too many times and that heart has sort of gone into hiding. I’m more anxious than I was years ago. I used to have this grand worldview that everything would work out in the end. And while, I know, I’m far from “The End,” I can’t help but wonder if this is intermission and if so, did I waste that time not working toward any solid goals? Because I didn’t expect to be so tired and even disenchanted at such a young age.

But that’s the thing. I’m disenchanted, of course, with lots of things. And not to complain about work, but it doesn’t afford me enough time to pursue non-work interests. So I have a very hard time defining my identity as something other than what it is in relation to my role there. (OK, here. I’m writing it at work because it’s 7 p.m. and I ain’t near done yet but I found a hole in my schedule wherein I can do some personal thinking.)

What I’ve found, to cope, is to have what I call built-in downtime. We don’t really hang out and do happy hours and stuff, but we do really enjoy each other on the team and if we can swing a few minutes to talk, we love it. So basically yeah, I goof off for a few minutes here and there during the day. It’s nice and it’s great for trust-building. But if I ruled the world, it’d be done in a bar instead. Which was what I did years ago.

So, am I more content? Not at all. I’m more restless. I know my life will unfold the way it is meant to, but that doesn’t stop me from wishing time away sometimes in that I want to get to the “good part” faster.

2. What do you hope the next year will bring? Do you expect things to more or less stay the same? Or do you see big changes? How do you feel about that?

If I didn’t have the hope that life would be better next year, I wouldn’t be here. Not to intimate in the least that I am suicidal, but I can absolutely see how someone would get to the point where they’re ready to end it all. Once you lose faith that there’s got to be something bigger and better out there, you don’t have anything left.

That said, realistically I see myself in the exact same place — job, apartment, rut — next year. But do I want to be? Oh hell no. I want to work less and play more. I want to be in love — really, truly, head-over-heels addicted to someone who’s equally enamored of me because they’d be nuts to let me get away. I want to rush home to either see that person or to enjoy the fact my apartment will have finally been unpacked/decorated/furnished. I want to call my friends and suggest going out because I haven’t been so supernaturally drained from work that I actually have something left to give to them at the end of the day or week.

I’m telling the universe that I want everything it has to offer. I’m tired of thinking that the things “everyone else” has are not meant for me. I want those “normal” things, too. I am capable of so much more than I’m doing and giving. And the right people will finally wise up and figure out how to tap into that potential and benefit from it. I’m not purposely holding out on anybody — all they have to do is ask.

3. What would your ideal life situation be? Do you feel that it’s within your grasp, or merely a pipe dream?

A perfect segue. I am very relational in nature. Big pictures are the only pictures I can deal with. Details bore me and routine frustrates me. Which is why I flit from job to job, and person to person, with ease. I interview each, exhaustively, and move on to the next day’s story.

But I’m tired of that. I want to get to know someone or something really, ridiculously well. I crave comfort. I hate having a meltdown and not knowing who, if anyone, to call. I hate having my car acting up and not feeling like there’s anyone I can contact for a ride if I needed one. I’ve gotten rid of the people who feel like I owe them my firstborn if they do me a menial favor, but that doesn’t leave many others. I’m fine with that, most days. But other days I wake up and go, yeah, I really wish I could just have a hug right now. A real one.

Here’s my pipe dream. I don’t sleep much in general, and never around anyone else. And I think y’all would be surprised how absolutely uninterested I’ve been in *that* not just lately, but for a long time now. Not to say that I’m not a sexual being. I am. TRUST ME on this. But I’ve done the emotionally detached thing for way too long. And I’m through. I want to care that this person is here in the morning. I want to not be plotting my getaway excuses in mid-thrust. I want to know that if I fall asleep, I haven’t “lost” the game. That’s a level of vulnerability I haven’t achieved yet. Maybe I never will. But I hope to. And I will probably fight it kicking and screaming, but that’s half the fun, I suppose!

I want a reason to go home at night. I want a reason to stay in a particular city. I want to be able to use my ridiculous overabundance of nurturing skills to give someone else everything it is that I also want for myself.

4. Ask me something.

At what point in your life do you think you would look at it and go, “Yeah, this is what I’ve been working my way toward”? What will you have achieved that you can say, “I did good, damn it”?

So I was having my traditional Monday morning panic attack, gulping down my last bit of sunshine and air before hitting the salt mines, when I decided I should remind myself of a much worse plane of existence. So, I fired up my ex-employer’s website, and lo and behold, I was rewarded.

A photo of the two laziest employees was displayed prominently on the front page. And in that, I took comfort that the poster children for that mess of a place were correctly chosen. They were trying to exile the one, but I see they are content to not even graze that limbo bar of mediocrity and put somebody in the position who can do something with it. The other assaulted me in a ladies’ room and everyone got mad at my boss for creating a hot fuss about it because they don’t like conflict over there, especially if it involves someone standing up for someone else.

They also have a place where you can send ideas. That cracked my shit up — when we asked for suggestion boxes and the like, we were laughed out of Dodge. They were afraid of what we might suggest — god forbid we solve a problem or ask to implement something low-cost and useful to improve morale. I’m convinced the e-mail address is going nowhere — I was going to suggest that they just close up shop and sell the building and refund the subscribers’ money, but I’m sure it would have just resulted in a big 404 error, just like my career there did!

… on “Cops.”

From iAttire, the iPod wifebeater!

But wait, there’s more — gutchies, too!

Spotted at the inimitable Irk’s.

Yet, I am seriously thinking Sugarland’s new song, “Want To,” is more than just a touch inspired by Mr. Jon Bon Jovi.

I was listening to it a dozen times in the car yesterday and I’ll admit, I alays thought those two had a little flirtation or maybe even a “thing” since they did some musical collaboration last year. Anyway, on the new song, there’s a lyric that makes me wonder:

“You’ve got a dream of a degree
And a shirt that smells like me.”

Now, I can name dozens of interviews with Jon during the past 20 years when he’s made the point that he’s only graduated high school — that life has been his educator. I vaguely remember a song lyric about it but I have 100-plus Bon Jovi songs in iTunes and I don’t have all day to listen to them to figure it out.

In any event, leaving behind an item spritzed with some cologne sounds like something I’d do, or ask someone to do. Meaning, someone’s gotta go and there’s otherwise no trace of them.

Or maybe it’s just the writer in me looking for underlying meanings that don’t exist. Or the writer is just looking for fodder for her new book. Whichever. Yet I can’t stop listening to that song now and wondering where Jennifer Nettles’ mind was when she penned that lyric. …

So apparently it’s been determined that I actually *have* a personality, as I had to have it assessed this week. It changed again, but not too much.

Last installment of my personal voyage, I was crowned an ENFP. Extrovert. Intuitive. Feeling. Perceiving. Whee.

I had to retake the test and came up with the Feeling being replaced with Thinking. (ha!). I usually do test as an ENTP, although it’s a little “t” because I don’t like to think. Hurts my widdle brain.

I did apparently score the highest in the class in the Intuitive bit. 100%, actually, and 21 out of 22 on the Perceiving side. Having a touch of psychic ability probably doesn’t hurt matters, I’m sure!

There were two of us with off-the-charts intuitive skills. The instructor put the two of us in a group, and holy crap, were we cognitively identical. (Our only variation is that she scored as an Introvert, which is funny because I’m the one with my head up my butt most of the time.) The instructor asked us to write our names with our right hands. (Easy, breezy.) Then to do so with our left hands. And strangely enough, my buddy and I did that just as quickly too.

The instructor looks at my paper and said, “I haven’t had anybody ambidextrous in my class in six years.” I pointed to my friend and said, “She is, too.” Basically, we defeated the whole exercise about how challenging it is to step out of the side of the brain (and, thus, personality indicator) you’re accustomed to functioning in.

That’s life, though. I hate deadlines and structure and dress codes and “have tos.” My challenge to myself has always been to figure out how to test the boundaries enough to retain my individuality and feel like I did it “my way.”

My score between Thinking and Feeling was a toss-up, at 14-to-10. The instructor said it will probably move more toward the F if I go on to have kids, as it did with her, because you lose your thinking time. (Which would explain why “Grey’s Anatomy” writers are turning our beloved hardass, Miranda Bailey, into a candyass instead. Bastids!) But she did tell me I could choose which one felt right for me.

So, I opened up my little manual and read the differences. ENFPs (my former label) get stressed the hell out by structure, confrontation, conflict, solitude, routine tasks, undemanding situations, emotionally unpleasant conditions, meetings and regulation. Heh. Exactly.

But then Sabre read my latest label (ENTP) and its stress-inducing list, and she said, “Holy shit, that’s you!”

ENTPs are wigged out by too much time alone (mostly true for me), routine, long meetngs, repetitive details (I can’t believe I’m typing two lists. So true!), deadlines, structure, close supervision (amen) and … this was the clincher … “spewing of emotions by others.”

Sabre reminded me of some chick we saw at a bar, who was crying and bawling and making an ass out of herself. What I didn’t realize and that Sabre did is that I stepped somewhere outside of my mind with annoyance and wanted to clobber her. And I did, I remember now. It’s a bar. Drink, smoke and be merry. Listen to music and stay the fuck out of my space if you’re not going to illuminate it.

Or, like I told Sabre, “When I’m not the dysfunctional one in the room, there’s a problem. Those who make me look normal have to be REALLY fucked up.”

That probably explains my love/hate relationship with Meredith Grey. (Shut up, I’d watch TV for a living if I could.) When everyone was calling her “dark and twisty” on the show, I was like, oh yeah, that’s an understatement. So when I was sobbing at my desk yesterday as I said goodbye to my beloved colleague, I realized that I am, in fact, dark and twisty Meredith.

I can’t stand Mer and her problems but you know what? Give me a bout of dysentery so I can fit into her child’s size 6X jeans and I would SO be her. She makes me mad because she reminds me of me. Over-the-top emotional. Guileless. Compulsive. Driven by her heart. (And crotch, apparently. Ahem.) Rendered immobile by choice and conflict. Too busy fighting inside herself to fight for anything else.

As for me, I’m still on the fence about ENFP versus ENTP. The FP is more OCD (how’s that for alphabet soup?), forgetful, prone to depression, disorganized, impatient and sarcastic. (Me? Sarcastic? Hahahaaaaaa.) And the TP (Great. Toilet Paper. Yup, now I see this one will win!) becomes frustrated, unfocused and mouthy; makes excuses; is irritated with others’ incompetence; and is self-critical.

I guess that settles it. ENTP, it is. Incidentally, Sabre and I had complained to the instructor about the either/or nature of the test, and now that I have my scorecard in-hand, apparently NT types hate choosing between two rights and two wrongs. Ha. Which explains why, when I go to rip my mechanic a new asshole today, I will be torn between murdering him or putting my foot up his ass and kicking him across six lanes of traffic!

I am sort of annoyed because with the new and improved iTunes, I can’t (yet) strip the DRM from a song to save my widdle life. I wasn’t planning on file-sharing, just streaming it up here.

Oh well, If you like Sugarland, their new single “Want To” is my new earworm of the week. No reason for that. Well, none that I’d share, anyway!

So my best friend calls to say to me, very blase-like and shit, that she just tried to feed her 1-year-old son cat food.

She didn’t mean to — she was looking at the cats and thinking that they should be fed, too. So she went and dipped her hand in what she thought was the Cheerios box and was about to dump it on the kid’s high-chair tray, only to realize just as her hand touched the plastic that it was not human food.

Sad thing is, the boy’s a little eating machine — he probably would have loved it. She reports that the cats were quite pissed off that not only does the child get all the attention in the house, but also all the food.

Sadder still, for the decade-plus that I’ve had cats myself, if it were me I’m not overly sure I wouldn’t have done the same thing. And for as preoccupied as I always seem to be, I worry that I wouldn’t have noticed my mistake within a reasonable amount of time!

Garfield and friend

Originally uploaded by dcwriterdawn.

Scenes from the backseat of my car. Garfield’s buckled in ’cause I drive like a maniac and he ends up in the front seat sometimes otherwise. I got him a girlfriend last weekend, a Steelers teddy bear cheerleader. (Oh, the stories THAT can invoke. …)

Note that Big G is wearing a Washington Capitals hat. I have my loyalties — just to different cities!

Anyway, this makes me smile when I come out to my car, even though I want to torch the fucking thing sometimes. (Damn mechanics broke the coolant chamber, so the instrument panel’s all lit up no matter how much fluid I pour into it ’cause it’s always emtpy. Whee.)

Perhaps every woman should come with a manual on “101 Ways to Not Irritate the Everloving Shit Out of Her,” but I would imagine that calling me during the season premiere of “Grey’s Anatomy” would be a freaking given to not DARE do.

To whom it concerns: If you know I’m ignoring you and you want to try to reach me during a time you know I will be available, fer crissakes, can ya at least ring the goddamned phone during a commercial break?

I mean, Meredith lost her panties! I couldn’t catch my breath from laughing. (I feel ya, sister!) Too bad it was Life screwing me that day and not McDreamy. Or any of the hot men on the show. *swoon*

No time to blawg today; all-day training, with projects bookending it. Tonight, social time!

Meanwhile, on the subject of trainings, Classic Caterwauling saves my ass with content for today.

Read my June 8, 2004, entry called “Exercise in Futility” below the fold:

Read the rest of this entry »